My Woman Is Gone

all right, so without any further a-do...

(...because you know, I could start this off just as any of the previous posts, that 'yeah, so... khm.. sorry everybody for not giving a sign of life for such a long time but we were busy with this and that, but we hereby promise to be better from now on yada-yada-yada...')

which is basically how I started this post anyway.

By the way, do you remember the first post on this blog?

Yep, the one in which I kindly asked you to organize a rescue mission in case we didn't give a shout for more than two weeks... It's been THREE weeks. WHERE IS THE CAVALRY?!! 

'...screw you guys! I'm going home!'

Anyhow.

Me woman is gone. 

Niki found herself in a quite favorable (to her) situation of having 3 days off in a row (was it 4? ... damn, I'm not sure when she's coming back..), so she took the cash AND the credit card and set off for the coast with a friend of her. Now, she's a good woman, so she left me some money ('baby, promise me that you'll do some shopping and eat like a human being'), which - I must honestly say - is half gone. That said, I must restrict the expenses to only the most vital necessities, which - accidentally - is beer, fags, and toilet paper. I'm pretty much secured with the first two, so I'm happy. The last one looks kind of grim, but I'll worry about it when the shit hits the fan (now, really, could you think of a better place for this phrase?). She even wanted to take my Bukowski as well, can you imagine that? UNTHINKABLE! But I stood my ground, so now I can continue spending my evenings reading "Tales of Ordinary Madness", doing all the unhealthy things that men do when their woman is gone (which is drinking in solitude, smoking, eating late and being on bad terms with my shaving machine), and getting into the vibe of an unacclaimed literary genius, boozing his life away while writing about bums and whores. It's a pretty sure bet to think that what you're reading right now is directly affected by Bukowski's prose. (God, I have to stop reading Bukowski). Other influences you may see (or not) in my writing include punk rock, as in a quite short interval of time (say, 2 days) I watched two documentaries: "Punk Attitude" by Don Letts, and "Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten" by Julien Temple, albums of Joy Division (influenced by seeing "Control") and neurotic jazz music of the kind of Cujo and Amon Tobin (which in fact is one and the same person). All of which I wholeheartedly recommend.

Today, no.. actually for the second day, while at work, I was playing with the thought of getting up from my chair, opening my boss's office with a well aimed kick and telling him straight in the face what I think of answering questions like 'is butt-sex healthy?' (that's an original one, actually). And I don't have warm feelings about answering such questions for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, especially since HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW IS IT HEALTHY OR NOT??

I am just about to initiate my plan B which constitutes of printing some 50 CVs and going on a tour around all the bars, restaurants and snob hotels of Palermo with the purpose of finding another job. And it's simply because ANYTHING is better than nursing love lives of Americans. Actually there is a couple of Polish restaurants around here, so I think I'll try those ones first and show them how to make Pierogi. 

Damn! Sorry. My beer is gone so we'll take a short brake for a refill. 

<..........> (which, in my humble opinion stands for 'short break to refill the beer')

During the last couples of weeks nothing much happened (besides me waiting for the cavalry to arrive). I've been looking for a job (again). Some other people have been looking for a job for me. And I've been looking for some more people who would look for a job for me. 

At the beginning of January a dear friend of ours from Ecuador came to visit. Her name is Soledad and we met in Granada, Spain, in early 2006. It was actually a funny situation because she arrived to Granada shortly after Niki departed for Hungary to write her thesis. All of a sudden I got this text in Spanish saying that she'd be staying at our place and I had no idea who she was. Apparently Niki met her in Tarragona, they talked all night and Sole said she was going to Granada, so Niki offered her to stay at our apartment... but forgot to tell me about it. So now, in Buenos Aires, she actually saw us both together for the first time! We also met Sole's cousin - Sylvia, and her boyfriend Dylan, and ended up consuming large amounts of alcohol and playing guitar. 

Oh, we also signed up for Couch Surfing, so all of a sudden we had some visitors coming from all parts of the world to crash on our couch for a couple of nights. So far we had: two girls from Germany, Geraud - a French guy who temporarily works and lives in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Terrence - dude from South Africa who was with us when Sole was here, and filled me in on secret practices of doing business, Ricardo - a Brazilian who filled us in on where to go in Brazil, and recently a couple from Hungary - Adrien and Karesz who brought us cseresznyepalinka (home made). By the way, Terrence, if you're reading this, dude, you left some Shaolin footwear here! One reason for you to come back! We actually have so many requests from Couch Surfing that - unfortunately - we had to start turning them down. Otherwise we just wouldn't have any private life with Niki any more. 

On the more local, but still social accent, it seems that we have found our Argentinean crowd finally, as expected I might add. There's always someone dropping by our flat, they are mostly Niki's colleagues from work: Leo (he likes punk rock too, but I don't know if he likes Bukowski), Yessi (she works for visual production of one quite well known band called Bersuit), Martin (who does sound for concerts and I got him into psytrance music), Ceci (I wrote about her before) and a bunch of other people that we meet almost everyday. Most of them work with Niki at Telemedia, so she gets to see them more often, naturally. 

We got to know some real Argentinean bars, not those plastic-fantastic designed "lounges" or whatever they're called where they charge you 15 peso for a beer. Last week Ceci took us to a place (of course I forgot the name by now) that had the real Argentinean tango vibe, minimal, 4th hand interior all soaked up in smoke (yes! it's allowed to smoke inside! .. at least it's not prohibited.) and young, and not so young lads and girls sitting around playing and singing tango. Wonderful! When I was there, I kept thinking that Nate would love this place.

Hmm... In the end I managed to end this post on a brighter and less cynical note.

Now back to Bukowski.

New Year's Eve On The Beach

Welcome in 2008 kiiiiiiids!

We just came back from our little trip to Reta, which is a small village on the coast of Argentina, some 200 km from Bahia Blanca. We spent there 3 days, including the celebration of the new year. This was first time we ever greeted the new year on a beach in 35 C, so all in all it was a quite interesting experience for us.

The invitation came from a friend of ours - Cecilia. She works as a camera operator at Telemedia here. She has some friends living in Reta, so we decided to rent a car, took onboard another friend of Ceci - Sofia, and headed off south. The trip was okay, we are slowly getting used to the fact that 600 km is not a distance in Argentina. In fact it qualifies as a short weekend trip. The night we left Buenos Aires Niki had to work until 4 am, so me and Zoli (a hungarian guys who is here for some time) took the opportunity to indulge serious amounts of alcohol in order to make the trip more bearable. As a result I fell asleep in no time, shortly after I managed to make myself comfortable in the back of our car. Unfortunately Zoli couldn't come as he had some work to do (of course in the end it appeared that he actually could have come with us - the Argentineans didn't show up for work). Our road led through the mainland of the province of Buenos Aires, along the road known as Ruta 3. The landscape is mostly flat, providing short outbursts of excitement when we saw some cows, but otherwise there was simply nothing. We also learned that there is no highway patrol in Argentina, so one can floor it as much as the conditions permit. Especially Niki took advantage of this fact, hungry for some driving action after three months of absence from behind the wheel.

At some 30 km before Reta the asphalt disappeared and the road turned to dirt. This helped me understand why everyone drives pickup trucks or SUVs. Needless to say that it was the same in Reta itself. Actually in Reta most of the people drive either quads or MadMax-like vehicles called "areneros" (arenas = sand). We actually saw a transparent bus, or at least something built on the base of a bus, that in fact was house on wheels, big wheels... really big wheels, so that in can park on a beach.

We arrived around 2 pm, and met with Vanessa, who was the only person there at that time. Well there were two dogs too: Frida and Miss. After a small chat we retired to catch some sleep and woke up only around 6 pm. It was very hot during the day so we didn't even think of going to the beach, as we would simply get sunburnt in 15 minutes. The main inhabitant of the house is Caro, who arrived while we were sleeping from Buenos Aires where she was visiting her family for Christmas. When we woke up there was also her boyfriend Marcos so the gang looked almost complete. We drank a couple of beers and decided to move the party to the beach. The sun was much weaker by that time, but it was just perfect to go for a swim and lay around. Before that we had to do some shopping and by the time we got back another friend arrived - Dejan. I actually never wrote about him, because it's a long story all together. Dejan is a friend of Meri, he's been traveling around the world on his bicycle for 3 years now and has another 2 years to go. When Meri came to visit us in Buenos Aires, she first went to Brasil, met with Dejan there and came together to us. Then Dejan stayed at our house for a couple of days and headed off to the south, but we stayed in touch and when it was clear we're going to Reta, we told him about it and he decided to join us, since he was only 200 km away from there. We were a bit worried how he would find us in Reta, because the only directions we had for him were: "find a bar called La Luna and ask for Caro's house", but he managed well. So in the end we went to the beach together. And the beach... oh man... it was huge sand beach with almost no people there, definitely not the kind of beach that one may find in places like Mar del Plata or Miramar, where people are squeezed like sardines between themselves and hauls of trash. Also very curious thing about that beach was that the sun rises from and sets to the sea. I've never seen anything like this (and I didn't see it this time neither, but we'll get to that). The first time I went for a swim I had a close encounter with a jellyfish, so I was later more careful about where I step, but Dejan soon repeated my errors and had a similar encounter. In the evening we had an "asado" (barbecue), but all in all it was more low key party, because we had to save strength for the big night.

The major part of the next day we spent on the beach again and later stayed at home, next to a bonfire to greet the new year. Only after that we decided to go into the town to join other people. Unfortunately for me, by that time I was pretty much wasted and in one of the bars I got into a fight which left me with a black eye. Actually I should rather say that I must have gotten into a fight as quite frankly I don't have any record of that event, nor have I witnesses as girls and Dejan were already on the beach waiting for the sunrise. Either way the "perpetrators" put me into their jeep and took me to the beach, so all in all it was nice of them.

Now don't get too worried about me. You know how it is with me and New Year's Eve. I rarely remember any of them, and it's a major success if I don't sleep through it. Either way there's always something strange going on with me or in my direct proximity on that occasion. The doctor said to put some ice, and in the end all that suffered was my pride, which led me to the conclusion to terminate my street-fighter career with immediate effect. At least one thing I learned that night... Of course Niki was worried to death about me and when it was clear that nothing serious happened her mother instincts was immediately replaced with anger that yet again I managed to screw up her party. Soon she packed me to bed and once I was out of her way she continued to have fun. So this is why I didn't see the sunrise, but judging from the pictures the girls made it was quite some view.

Now my eye is nicely changing colors, which is fun to observe.